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Книги Updike John
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«John Updike's twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen's education (Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, «How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!» His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: «A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall.» This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century.» |
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Endpoint opens with a series of connected poems which were written on the occasions of Updike's recent birthdays and culminate in his confrontation with his final illness. They look back on the boy that Updike once was, on his family and little town and the circumstances that fed his love of writing. Then there are 'Other Poems', ranging from fanciful musings about what it would be like to be a stolen Rembrandt painting to celebratory outpourings that capture the spontaneity and flux of life. Finally, there is a set of sonnets, some of which are inspired by exotic travels in distant lands, and some of which simply take pleasure in the idiosyncrasies of nature in Updike's own backyard. For John Updike, the writing of poetry was always a special joy, and this final collection is an eloquent and moving testament to the life of this extraordinary writer. |
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John Updike was always as much a poet as a storyteller and the poems in this, his final collection, celebrate the everyday, even as they address his own imminent mortality. It is in the connected series of poems, Endpoint, written on his last few birthdays and culminating with the illness that killed him, that Updike's work is at its most touching and poignant. |
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'There, in Russia five years ago, when Cuba had been taken out of the oven to cool and Vietnam was still coming to a simmer, Bech did find a quality of life — impoverished yet ceremonial, shabby yet ornate, sentimental, embattled, and avuncular-reminiscent of his neglected Jewish past'. Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome precis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories, there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopaedia of an unknown planet — and Borges' unique imagination and intellect plays throughout. This book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B. |
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'There, in Russia five years ago, when Cuba had been taken out of the oven to cool and Vietnam was still coming to a simmer, Bech did find a quality of life — impoverished yet ceremonial, shabby yet ornate, sentimental, embattled, and avuncular-reminiscent of his neglected Jewish past'. Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome precis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories, there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopaedia of an unknown planet — and Borges' unique imagination and intellect plays throughout. This book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B. |
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More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick, The three divorcees — Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie — have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world, to such foreign lands as Canada, Egypt, and China, and renew old acquaintance. Why not, Sukie and Jane ask Alexandra, go back to Eastwick for the summer? The old Rhode Island seaside town, where they indulged in wicked mischief under the influence of the diabolical Darryl Van Horne, is still magical for them. Now Darryl is gone, and their lovers of the time have aged or died, but enchantment remains in the familiar streets and scenery of the village, where they enjoyed their lusty primes as free and empowered women. And, among the local citizenry, there are still those who remember them, and wish them ill. How they cope with the lingering traces of their evil deeds, the shocks of a mysterious counterspell, and the advancing inroads of old age, form the burden on Updike's delightful, ominous sequel. |
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Following on from the acclaimed Just Looking and Still Looking, Always Looking treats readers to a series of elegant and sensitive essays on art, and includes writing on a comprehensive array of subjects, both American and European. In The Clarity of Things, Updike looks closely at Copley, Homer, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop, in order to explore what is 'American' in American art. From here he moves to masterpieces of American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — from the sublime landscapes of Frederic Church and the series paintings of Monet and Degas, to the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte and the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. With more than two-hundred full-colour reproductions, Always Looking is an invitation to see the world afresh through the eyes of a matchless connoisseur. |
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The compelling story of a young Muslim boy coming to terms with both his growing manhood and his need to feel a part of a larger family than his own, which is fatherless. It leads him into contact with Islamic extremists. |
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